


Put The Stars To Shame

by sunshinexprincess



Series: Wound With Circumstance [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Kinda, Slow Burn, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:54:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22329679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinexprincess/pseuds/sunshinexprincess
Summary: He looked at her, glowing white and gold against the black of the room with the sky floating slowly by behind her. She looked out of place. She had been, he realized, always out of place.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey
Series: Wound With Circumstance [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1606390
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33





	Put The Stars To Shame

“Did it have to be _now_?” He hissed, voice dangerously deep through his mask. He was pinning her against the wall, arm at her throat. “I was in a meeting!”

“Well so was I,” she retorted. She struggled angrily at his weight. “Let me go.”

He looked carefully down both ends of the hall before releasing her with a huff. “Follow me.”

She instead took a few tentative steps down the hallway from the direction he had come. _If only he was able see her then. . ._

_Now._

She started, her thoughts turning bright red when she realized he could hear her; she had been practicing tirelessly since their last meeting, so much so that her sleep schedule had become almost nonexistent. How did he always find a way in?

_Because, Jedi,_ he smirked beneath his mask when he felt her stiffen behind him, _I was trained by the same man you were. Except for longer._

_And he wanted to._

She clenched her fists, left hand moving an inch closer to her side for her saber. But then she stopped. Master Luke would never want this for her. Even if he had lied, even if he had purposefully strayed from the Force, he had taught her about what it meant to be tempted slowly by the Dark and successfully resist its calling. And that had to count for something.

_Right?_

_Wrong._

“Stop doing that,” she whispered harshly, quickly following him through the sickeningly identical hallways. Where was he leading them?

“i’ll stop when you’re strong enough to resist me,” he responded. He sounded bored, and she was becoming increasingly frustrated by his attitude. She wasn’t weak.

“I can still hear you.” He opened a door, ushered her inside, and took two more looks down the hall before shutting the door and locking it.

“Shut up.”

She began to look around, taking in all of the currently inactive control panels and computers. Hundreds of buttons and black screens filled the room, all facing the same direction. A Silver ramp rose between the two sides of the room, dividing it and expanding out into a platform like some sort of stage.

“The main control and combat room,” he answered her thoughts. “Where my most trusted and talented officers operate.”

She frowned at the word trust. “Where are they now?”

He didn’t answer, and she turned annoyedly to ask again. He was just staring at her- at least she figured he was. He still hadn’t taken off the mask, and she wondered why he had been wearing it in the first place. She suddenly remembered his anger in the hallway.

“Oh. Right.” They were all in the meeting.

“You look different, Jedi.” He swept past her cooly and began making his way up the ramp. “My mother has turned you into a plaything, it seems.”

Rey put a hand to her carefully styled hair self-consciously, glaring at his retreating form before following him up the ramp.

“She has not,” she argued. “We were simply in a meeting. It isn’t polite for me to show up to an intergalactic panel in training clothes.”

He snorted softly through his nose, reaching up to detach his mask with a soft _hisss._ He looked at her, eyes black and boring down into hers. “Not polite, or not politically correct?”

She turned red, mouth open and closing again as she searched for the right way to explain.

‘It isn’t like that,” she finally said, leaning onto the railing over the rows of sleeping tech.

“You know it is.” He appeared next to her, placing his gloved hands evenly on the silver bar. Everything he said sounded so certain. How she wished she could be like that. Even if he was on the wrong side of the war, he was certainly a more convincing leader than she.

“I do,” she said, hanging her head as the words spilled out. “But it’s the least I can do. I already feel like I’m not doing any of this right. People keep coming up to me. . .asking about you, about my battles, if it’s true I can blow up a moon if I think hard enough.” She tried to laugh. “Asking me to take care of their sons and daughters as if I can stop them all from dying.” She shook her head violently as she felt saltwater start to build in her eyes. “The least I can do is wear one of the General’s dresses and put up my hair.”

When she looked up he had moved, and was standing near a small button on the wall. “You can blow up a moon.” He smirked darkly, and she shivered. “It all depends on if you want to.” He pressed the button, and suddenly the black wall in front of her began to fold into itself and slide open, revealing a vast sky littered with stars and distant planets.

_Wow._

_Yes. I used to think so too._

“Why don’t you anymore?”

He continue to watch the stars, the same look of boredom back on his features. She noticed that his scar had healed well, only a thin ribbon of dirty red trailing down his cheek and disappearing beneath his robes. “I got used to it, just as you got used to Jakku. Eventually all places lose their appeal if you stay in them long enough. For me the sky is just that. The sky.”

“This is your home then,” she murmured, eyes glazed and wide as she attempted to take in the infinity spread before her.

He chuckled humorlessly. “An Emperor has no true home, Jedi,” he replied scathingly.

“No,” she agreed.“But every person does.”

“I am flattered you consider me normal.”

He was looking at her thoughtfully, a single thick curl falling over his right cheek. “My home even as a child was less than remarkable, in scene or in community. Skywalker’s planet was desolate and depressing, to put it politely. And this sky,” his voice went soft, and she read a surprising nostalgia in his energy. “I memorized it long ago.”

“Hm.”

She found herself smiling at the thought that a younger, still naive Kylo Ren had lain awake in his quarters after exhausting training sessions with the then Supreme Leader, opting for stargazing instead of haunted dreams.

_I would give anything to know it like you do._

_I can teach you._

Rey could feel him looking at her, his energy strong but simultaneously pleading her for consent. He _wanted_ to show her. He was just as alone, just as desperate for someone to understand him as she was.

He either didn’t want to respond to her thoughts or was too busy running over information in his head, because soon he pointed to a burning orange star in her right peripheral vision. “That one is Eden,” he started. “Said to be the genesis of all of this. All of the galaxy.” A true smile graced his lips. “Some species on a now extinct planet made it a kind of religion and somehow it spread. I don’t believe it.”

She edged closer to him on the railing, pausing when the cloth of his cloak was inches from her reach. “Why not?”

He shrugged. “Everything has an explanation. This,” he gestured in the direction of the star, “doesn’t. There’s no evidence, no reports. Just stories.”

_Then again, thats what you Jedi rely on._

_And you rely on lies._

“This one is Titan,” he continued as if he hadn’t heard her thoughts, gesturing to another orange sphere to her left.“One of the biggest stars in the galaxy, second only to that one.” She followed the line of his finger to an enormous purple mass in the distance, set noticeably farther apart from the rest of them.

“What’s that one?” She questioned.

The Supreme Leader locked eyes with her before answering.

“They call it Sola,” he murmured, and his form relaxed onto the railing, completely unguarded and open. “Supposedly one of the youngest stars in the galaxy, and,” he said pointedly, “the reports back it up. Its size is almost unmatched.” He looked out through the window before continuing. “She existed long before much of the rest of this did. That’s how they gave her her name.”

Rey turned her head back to the star. “What does it mean?”

“She who is alone.”

Rey smiled before she could stop herself.

_What?_

“I understand her,” she said.

He looked at her, glowing white and gold against the black of the room with the sky floating slowly by behind her. She looked out of place. She had been, he realized, always out of place.

_Like him._

He moved silently behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders. “It could be yours.”

He felt her sigh deeply, falling slightly into his chest, relishing in the feeling of her weight against him. This felt extraordinarily _whole._

“I know,” she whispered.

_But you know that I can’t._

He closed his eyes, clearing out his anger with an overwhelming blue. He knew by now that she responded to it terribly.

_And you know that you can._

The Bond faltered.

“Gotta go.” She turned around resignedly and titled her head up at him. “Teach me more when I’m back.”

She faded under his hands, leaving his palms curved around the open air where she had been a millisecond before.

_Maybe._

He lifted his mask from where he had placed it under the window button and closed the barrier up again, ignoring the crushing disappointment that was threatening to cut off his breathing.

He put the mask back on.

“HUX!”

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I will still go down with this ship, believe it or not.  
> 2\. feedback is love love love.  
> 3\. feel free to leave suggestions for inspiration & I will do my best :)


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